Alice Kern

Harper: Good morning.
KERN: Good morning.

Harper: Could we begin by you telling us your name, your maiden name, your date and place of birth?
KERN: My name today is Alice Kern. My maiden name was Alice Lucy Koppel. I was born March 30th. It was the first night of Passover.

Harper: What year?
KERN: 1923.

Harper: Where were you born?
KERN: I was born in Romania, small town, Sighet [spells out — the town is known today as Sighetu Marmatiei].

Harper: Who was your household made up of?
KERN: Father, mother, and then we took in my mother’s mother. She lived with us. I had two brothers. One left to study in Paris to become a doctor. And we had a housemaid.

Harper: What did your father do for a living, and what was his name?
KERN: His name was Henry Koppel. Very religious Jewish man, but my mother dressed him quite modern, clean cut.

Harper: What did he do for a living?
KERN: He was the first Jewish man who invented a little business with fresh milk products. He used to travel all around the countryside to the Romanian peasants and made them bring him their fresh cheeses and milk products.

Harper: Can you tell me about your mother, what her name was? What she did?
KERN: My mother was born in Czechoslovakia in a very small resort place [sounds like Rahova]. She was very beautiful, and one day my father as a traveling salesman went through this little village, saw her standing outside. He fell in love, went to her parents, and asked for her hand in marriage. My grandmother came to Sighet, bought a duplex because she had another daughter to get married, and she sent both daughters to live in Sighet. And that’s how my mother got married with my father.

Harper: Where was your father born?
KERN: The sad thing was for me that I knew everything about my mother, but we children never asked anything about our families or past relatives. My father had an elderly mother living next to his business, but by the time I realized there was another granny, she was so old that she could hardly speak any longer. I just don’t know much about his side of the family, or where he was even born.

Harper: What was your brother’s name, and when was he born?
KERN: My first brother, the eldest one, his name was Zolly. If I am 70 today, he is 11 years older. What year would that make? He was already 11 years old when I was born with my next brother. Two of us came after he was already a young man almost.

Harper: And what was your other brother’s name?
KERN: Oscar.

Harper: Would you say your family was middle class?
KERN: Middle-upper.

Harper: What did that mean in the town you lived in?
KERN: When I was young, none of the people had deposit boxes, like you go to a bank to deposit every day. We did not have this type, so my mother and father — they were working from morning until evening, side by side, and in the evening they used to bring home a special little pouch loaded with currency monies. I remember they were in different shapes of women with long, like an evening gown. That was 1,000 lei currency. We had a safe in our salon. It was a beautiful, heavy steel cabinet, lined inside with silver and red plush velvet. I was the only one who was allowed to follow my father every evening and see him depositing all those monies in the safe, except once when I was in bed with measles. Then, just not to scratch myself, he came home every night and gave me 1,000 dollar currency. But of course, I loved my older brother — he was older then — and I gave it to him. Which was, of course, taken away again.

Harper: Did you live in a house or an apartment?
KERN: It was a heavy stone duplex, rooms taller than in this country. High ceilings. Very well done.

Harper: What were your neighbors like? Were they Jews or gentiles?
KERN: All Jews. Sighet was only Jewish people — businesses, merchants, different manufacturers, hat. Here and there, there was a Hungarian family who was baking French pastry, and maybe the mailman was a gentile. There was a couple also. I called her “Auntie Lola.” They never had children. They were Hungarians. Every morning I used to go to her and greet her. She picked me up. She held me for a while, she gave me a sugar cube, and I went home. Her husband, later on, had to come confiscate goods from the Jewish people. It was very sad to see him later.

Harper: Tell me a little more about your town, how big it was, some streets, what it looked like?
KERN: I was born in the same street as Elie Wiesel, and they called it Snake Street because it wound up all the way, winding. I knew every little crack in the sidewalk. I knew every home, who lived there. In fact, I was very curious to know how they lived, and I used to just go in and wanted to see how people lived. Most of the people were rather middle-lower class. That means they were working class. Wherever they were working, I don’t remember, but it was a beautiful street, only Jews, and that’s what was so beautiful about it. Friday, the Jewish businesses were closed. My father went to his barber, he came home, ran off to the synagogue. My granny was cooking all day the delicious Shabbat dinners. The table was set when he came home, and I could see in every home the same thing happened. Because we were all Jewish people. We were not real friends, but we knew each other. Everybody knew each other. We got along very nicely. Very warm, warm little Jewish town.

Harper: Did you know the Wiesel family?
KERN: Yes. They lived on the corner of my street, and one of his sisters, for a while I went to school with her. Elie Wiesel was in those days a tiny little, skinny boy. I didn’t talk to him. He wouldn’t talk to girls, either. But I was very curious, and I did go in. They had a store right next to their living quarters. Curiosity, I had to go see what they are selling, and his sister took me inside the living quarters. It was a very serene atmosphere, not like my home, filled with Persian rugs and needlepoint, grand piano. It was different.

Harper: Did your father have a shop in the town, or did he just travel?
KERN: No, he rented a place, and I always thought what a wonderful and beautiful taste he had. It was a huge room in a building, and he built some pink cement floors and grey cupboards where he kept all those fresh cheeses, with a net, covered, and everything was so tasteful and so beautiful. In the olden days, the peasants, the Romanian farmers, used to come in, so he built for them a [razor?] kind of like, three huge steps, and they all came inside this room and they brought themselves food, but they had to taste my father’s cheese, because he mixed a special mixture, and he was famous for it.

Harper: So your father, he had in a sense a little factory where he worked, or a little workshop there in the town?
KERN: No, that was a business. It was an open business. And he used to import cubes of fresh butter. When people came in they wanted five decagram, so you take a knife and a nice piece of paper, and you put it on the scale. Later on I was so surprised, when I grew older, they came to ask for a certain decagram, and I just could cut it and put it on the scale and it was right. It was very, very simple. My father had only four elementary, but he was the best mathematician, and he helped me a lot, too. Since he was so religious, he went twice a day to pray, sunrise and sunset. And of course, my curiosity, I begged to take me with him. The one and only little girl was allowed to go and sit among all those religious Jewish men. I felt so good, and so holy, you know? Especially when they opened sometimes the ark, and I got to stand there with two other little boys and watch it, and that’s how I grew up.

Harper: Do you remember what street the synagogue was on?
KERN: No, not the name, but it was a Jewish quarters. It was a long yard, and at the end of the yard there was a small building. In fact, one room was only for men, and then there was a wall with windows, and in the other side were the women. My grandmother used to attend that for a while, but I was not comfortable to be shut away from men.

Harper: Was your whole family religious, your mother, too?
KERN: My mother was modern. She grew up in this open place in Czechoslovakia. It was a resort, and people came from all over the world there. They had this hot springs, beautiful mountains to climb, and they were quite modern. Of course, my granny was very religious, very orthodox. She had a wig on. My grandfather was a barber and a dentist of the village, and yet she was so much better with the barbering that all the religious men, all those really believers, they wanted her to shave or cut their hairs. She was good at it. So my mother grew up with all this influence, and then when she got married and came to Sighet, she took us children to movies, theaters, vacations. We had the best and most beautiful clothes. We were open to life. I had nothing else to worry, just to copy Paris fashion, Americans, grow up, get married, and raise a family. That was my future. Except my oldest brother, he wanted to become a doctor to please my mother.

Harper: Being religious in your family, what exactly did that mean? What did you do on a day-to-day basis? You already told us that your father went to synagogue, but what other . . .?
KERN: Okay, I’ll tell you. My grandmother was really orthodox. She was in charge with the kitchen. She prayed from morning til night. Every time she caught me just taking a sip of water, “You forgot to say the prayer!” If she served butter bread, “Be sure and say the prayer!” She was in that age, and she continued to be a real orthodox, beautiful lady. She was handy with almost anything; she could do anything. But this is how she grew up, and she continued the rituals, the traditions. This was my living quarters — very orthodox, very kosher, two sets of dishes, two sets of tables. Everything was two. And of course, the beautiful Passover dishes which had to be exchanged once a year.

We all followed, and we didn’t mind, except in the second part of the building lived my aunt, who married a young man, and he was a non-believer. So I’ve seen their ways. He loved me, and I loved him. They couldn’t have children until very late, so they helped me to grow up. They were very kind, but I’ve seen a different aspect of religion. I’ve seen my grandmother. Saturday, if by accident I tore a piece of paper, she made me step on my finger because God will punish me.

As I grew up and became a teenager, I kind of shied away from those traditions, and I’ve seen many other people with different ways of observing. I respected everybody, but I wanted to go my way. My mother went only once a year to the temple, a Sephardic temple. Elegant ladies, well dressed. I sat next to her. Women upstairs, men downstairs. I was busy counting the blue ceiling with the stars. I heard the cantor. I heard the rabbi. I knew already how to read Hebrew — I had a private woman coming in — but I never understood a word. And yet I felt so [inaudible word] that I didn’t know what that means. The whole verses, the Hebrew letters, they were just outstanding, but I had no idea what I was praying.

Harper: Was this the same synagogue that your father went to?
KERN: No, that was real modern. Even you could see once in a while horse-drawn carriages bringing beautiful, elegant ladies to the synagogue.

Harper: You said it was Sephardic?
KERN: It was Sephardic, yes. My grandmother and my father, they went to an Orthodox. They were just little small rooms in some buildings. I visited them always during the holidays, but I was glad always to return and sit down beside my mother.

Harper: How many synagogues were in your town, do you know?
KERN: As I remember, there was this Jewish street with my father’s place, and there was another building for my grandmother, and there was the Sephardic ones, and on our last walk, when they took us to the railroad station, they made us stop in one synagogue a little bit further away from my home. I had never been around there — that was the lower-class people living quarters — but it was a beautiful building and a real beautiful synagogue.

Harper: What language did you speak in your house?
KERN: My father and mother, when they went to school, this region was occupied by the Hungarians, and after the First World War, they were reoccupied by the Romanians. So we spoke Hungarian in the house, and I went to a Romanian school. And in the school, of course, we had to take French and Latin. I was very keen for languages. I was very interested.

Harper: Can you tell me a little bit about your schooling?
KERN: For elementary, I will never forget a beautiful Romanian teacher. She had a talent of bringing out the best from each of us, and I always was on the top. She groomed us, and I was a good student until I became 11 years old. She wrote a beautiful play, a musical, and she made me be the queen of the flowers. I loved music all my life. I used to pretend, dancing and singing and inventing languages, as far as I can remember, and she saw that in me, so she wrote this beautiful musical. I was 11 years old, and one day I was sitting and reading my lesson, and the book goes lower and lower and I couldn’t see. She asked me what that was. I said, “I can’t see.” Sent me home. I got glasses; I never wore them. And something happened after that. I lost all interest in studying. Music, dancing, curiosity, nature, stars. I was so interested how this Earth was formed. I had an encyclopedia. But I was not interested in studying items what I was not interested in. And the teachers later on in the gymnasium, they had no more opportunity to spend time.

Harper: Did you go to religious school? This school that you were describing was a secular school, I assume?
KERN: For elementary, then we were supposed to continue with gymnasium. Eight, gymnasium.

Harper: Did you also attend a religious school?
KERN: No, we had private tutors; they came to my house. Like I said, languages I loved. This was an elderly woman. She taught me how to read and write Hebrew, and I wrote a letter every day with Hebrew letters to my parents. I was so proud. But I had no idea, in the prayer book, what the words meant.

Harper: You said you went to the gymnasium. For how many years?
KERN: We started after I graduated of fourth elementary. Most of us, excluding the poor Jewish girls, could not continue. You had to pay tuition, monthly. So I entered the gymnasium, and there were too many people and very, very scarce individual attention, and I got lost. I just went. I was glad to go home to have some refreshments and off to dancing. We had a beautiful building, and there was a couple who played the piano, and students, we all gathered after school and we were dancing for hours. And it was not allowed, either. Or sometimes we went to an afternoon movie, and then if the teachers found out, they came inside the movie house and got hold of the students. They were punished, expelled. I was always on the very top of the floor and hiding under the chair. They never found me.

But in those days we had a king, the Romanians, King Carol II, and his son Prince Michael, and we were so indoctrinated to live and die for the king. We didn’t mind because the Romanians allowed the Jewish people to observe their holidays, their rituals, their traditions. We were accepted. Of course we could not own land, but the whole town was only Jewish businesses, except one restaurant was a Hungarian and another grocery store a Hungarian. The rest was all, one after the other, Jewish stores. What was so beautiful about it, came Saturday all the stores were allowed to be closed, and all the religious men were allowed to go and pray. My grandmother went to pray. My mother had to pick up the house since she was not home all week. It was a very peaceful and beautiful time, and the Jews especially, they were welcomed. Except much much later, the Romanians came up with Goga and Kuza, two Nazi leaders, just like Nazis. Then we started to get afraid already. Suddenly we were aware that there is a change, and an uncle from New York wrote to my father, “You’d better come to America because times are changing in Europe, and we hear lots of bad news.” And he was willing to send us tickets.

Harper: What year was this?
KERN: It must have been around 1937, ’38.

Harper: If I can interrupt you first, before we start down that track. I just want to know briefly, was your family active in the Jewish community? Not religious, but other sorts of Jewish agencies?
KERN: My mother was the president of the WIZO [Women’s International Zionist Organization] women. I think it was like a Hadassah organization, and they supported Palestine in those days. I was in a Saturday afternoon group for Palestine.

Harper: Like a Zionist?
KERN: Zionist. I was studying the map. We were dancing the hora. We were very Zionistic-minded. But only the low-income people got to go to Palestine. They disappeared once in a while, and they emigrated to Palestine. I remember my girlfriends’ father was very wealthy, and he bought land in Palestine. The girls always used to tell me, “Oh, my father just bought another piece of land!” And how lucky they were after the war.

Harper: Did your family ever discuss going to Palestine?
KERN: No, never. The majority were very happy where they were, and we felt very secure.

Harper: Were you or your family involved in any secular activities?
KERN: Nothing else. Just go to school, that was the main thing back then.

Harper: You said that in 1937 you noticed things were beginning to change. In conjunction with explaining this, can you tell me what you were doing in that time in your life?
KERN: I was still going to the gymnasium. The Romanians, the farmers, they were still illiterate. One day Prince Michael came through my hometown, and we had a contest. I almost met him. But of course, he was honored by a general’s family. Yet at this time already, it was so late, and after he left, one day we have seen all the farmers, the children come to town. They came into classrooms barefooted, and they were sent home to buy shoes. I remember that. But they were beautiful people. The Romanians were healthy and beautiful. They made everything their own selves, all their clothes, the weaving, shoes. And now they are forced to come to town. So then once in a while you could see — like we had our housekeeper. She was an outcast because a policeman didn’t want to marry her. She got a baby, but he refused to marry her. So many of those beautiful girls came to town. They were outcasts; they became housekeepers. And my parents just took care of her beautifully. I loved her.

Harper: What was her name?
KERN: Mitza. She used to pull me in the wintertime with a sled to school, and carrying my books Saturdays. Saturdays, the Jewish people were not allowed to write, so we always paired up with a Christian, Romanian girl, and she did the writing. I took it home, and then I could rewrite it Monday or Sunday.

Harper: Did you have Christian friends growing up?
KERN: Many, many. I went for my daily walks because we had no cars. I had to pass a Romanian church, and once in a while they were carrying Mary, statues all around outside the yard then going around the church, and I just stood there observing. Once I got to enter the church. I never told my grandmother about it; she was very much against it. Probably they were persecuted in her youth. They were afraid of disclosing that they are Jews, just kept very low key. But I wanted to see everything, and I was not hurt, and I had many friends.

Harper: Was that the first time you had ever been inside a church?
KERN: The first and last.

Harper: When did your family first hear about Hitler and troubles in Germany, or did you?
KERN: I have to stop [long pause, coughing — later in the interview, we find out that she is suffering from “sinus problems”].

Harper: I’d like to know if your family had heard of Hitler and persecution of the Jews in Germany, and when you found about this?
KERN: My hometown had one newspaper. It was not delivered as they do it in this country. I don’t remember seeing it. We did have a radio, and I remember my parents used to listen to news, but we children, we were excluded. I never knew there was a war until I was deported, except I did hear things once in a while. Until 1939, we didn’t pay any attention, and then one day I overheard that Germany was in trouble, and a name, Hitler, and people disappear, just little odds and ends. But my parents never talked to children. They never talked politics in front of us, so I had no idea; I just had a beautiful, innocent, free lifestyle.

But in 1939 then, my brother was studying in Paris to become a doctor, and he wrote to my mother that the Nazis are invading France and everybody is trying to escape. How sad it was. We were far away from France, what do you do? You just cry. My brother wrote that he got up on his bike and he rode it against the Pyrenees Mountains. It was covered in snow. He had to cross it, and he fell asleep in the snow. He almost died. But then he arrived into Spain. He was captured, but because he was a doctor they let him practice. And so my mother was at ease. I never used to read his letters, but I was always told when my mother answered, just to put a few French sentences because I had to show off that I know how to write French. Yet when I survived, the address came to my mind. I never addressed an envelope to him. I found out many, many strange things happening to the brain.

Harper: Did he live out the war in Spain?
KERN: Yes. And so in 1940, suddenly I was 17 years old — I had one more year in gymnasium — and I go [one] afternoon with my mother to a movie. We came out, the Hungarians came in, and the Romanians took off. I had to change my uniform, my languages. Went to school, but no sooner we were kicked out, “You are Jewish people. You aren’t supposed to get educated.” Then came every day another order, and then we found out [that] according to Hitler’s pact with the Hungarians was that they would get back Transylvania only if they will let the Jewish people go when the time comes. King Carol did not want to collaborate with the Nazis, so he took refuge in Switzerland. Then his son Prince Michael became king, but very short while. He was given an airplane to take wherever he wants to, so he took refuge in London, where he got married in England. The Hungarians came in and the sky fell, and we are ordered to wear a yellow star, Star of David.

Harper: Now what year did that happen exactly?
KERN: 1940. I was 17 years old.

Harper: Before the Hungarians took over, you started mentioning that things began to change a little bit?
KERN: Yes. In the capital, and close to Bucharest, capital of Romania, there was a different world. But in those small communities where I lived, there were mostly Jewish people; it was like a Jewish land almost, so we didn’t know about hardships. I knew one thing that I learned from some Romanian friends, that they were taught in the churches to hate the Jews because they killed Jesus. I grew up with that somehow. I think my grandmother did that to me. In fact, I was playing hopscotch with a Romanian girl one day and I won, and she started to shout at me, “You dirty Jew!” So I went into the house and asked my grandmother, “Am I dirty?” “No,” she said. “You’re not, but you will find out that the Christians are angry at the Jewish people.” And I grew up with that sense, that we killed Jesus. We accepted it, and that’s why all the Jewish people are living in low-key.

And then it changed to the worse. You were starting to be persecuted somehow and losing our freedom. I don’t remember exactly what happened to the last month or days in Romania, but the schools, suddenly in every class there was a corner, and they had to put the king’s picture, and the Virgin Mary, and a candle. To show that they are the real Romanians, and the real Christians, and we the others, the Jews, actually we are just there. We don’t count. That was the feeling in the last days.

Harper: And then, when the Hungarians came and took over, what other sorts of things happened?
KERN: Right away, the yellow star, Star of David, the Jewish people. And you were very careful not to speak out loud because there were a few Hungarians who right away went to the police and told them everything, so the Jewish people lost the freedom of speech. Suddenly strange Hungarian people came in and took over all the offices, all the management, the police station. And of course, I was kicked out for my last year of school. Jewish persons don’t go to school. We had a little strip downtown where we were going every day for our walks, and now we are pushed out. We were told, “The Jewish people are not allowed on sidewalks. You have to go into the middle of the street where the horse-drawn carriages go.” Punishments every day. Humiliation.

Harper: By who?
KERN: By the Hungarians.

Harper: People or police?
KERN: Police mostly, and strange Hungarians, not the locals. We didn’t have too many Hungarians in town, one neighbor or two neighbors. But orders came. Police, yes. And one day even — during the Romanians, we had those beautiful, elaborate parades. They even allowed communist groups to parade. And my uncle, who was — I always called him a freeloader. He never worked a day in his life; he let his wife do the work. And he led the Communist party. He always used to tell me that when we will be taken over by the communists, we will have a beautiful world. Everybody will be the same, and you will never have to pay for your schooling or anything. That’s how he was brainwashed, and I listened to him. Now the Hungarians came in, and the first thing is, they are searching for him. He was a communist; he has to be arrested. But he was alerted, and he went in hiding. And one day my aunt, who had this beautiful handcraft business — everything was handmade; crochet, beautiful tapestries, needlepoint — she was working there with six girls, and one day they arrested her. They forced her. They wanted to find out where her husband is. Of course she wouldn’t say. I don’t even think she knew where he was hiding. So they put her to jail. She almost committed suicide.

But I was then free of school; I didn’t have to go to school. I took over her business and I watched the girls, and one day the police came and got me, too. I came in, and if they didn’t kill me right there and then it was a miracle. They were so mean, so angry. They wanted to know where my uncle is, and I really didn’t know. They asked me for hours and hours, and then they let me go back. Standing in line for our ration bread, I was almost there, but a Hungarian came, kicks us out, “Go back to the back! You belong there!”

Then eventually, the Italian army came through my hometown, and they took all the Jewish girls and they called us the Red Cross nurses. I never had to bandage even my own finger, and now we had to take care of the sick Italian soldiers. They put us in the school, and we were inside, and all the Italian soldiers outside on the grounds there. What will we do? They were singing all day and we couldn’t speak Italian, but the Romanian and the Italian is a Latin language, so we got along quite nicely. It was a beautiful friendship developing. And the guitars. It happened one day that again I was kicked out from my line to receive my ration, and an Italian was watching there and he got angry what he had seen. So he took me back and put the Hungarian at the end of the line.

They were nice to the Jewish people. They kind of started to see the situation. Many, many beautiful Jewish girls took in some nice Italian boys, and they fed them. They were very hospitable. When I played the piano, one day I hear knocking on the window, an Italian soldier, and asked if he could come in and play the piano. Sure. I asked my parents to let him in, and we sat there for hours and he played and taught me all those beautiful Italian musics. But the Hungarians were not this way. They were mean, cold-blooded people. During the day I was home and the door opens, and a Hungarian, an elderly man with his peacock feather in his hat, he orders me to come into my beautiful, elegant salon and open all the cupboards. Daytime robbery. That’s how they were.

Harper: Did your family at all discuss your security? Were there any discussions about possibly leaving?
KERN: Never. They never spoke in front of us children, and we were not allowed to listen to radios. We had to cover up the radio. Because my uncle was daring, we always heard Winston Churchill, short wave. I don’t think they knew what he was talking because we didn’t know English, but they were so excited because here and there they understood a message.

Then they closed off my father’s little synagogue. He could not go pray. Then they forced the Jewish people to have businesses open on Saturday. Of course, my father pulled a trick and he hired a Christian woman. She was sitting in the business all day Saturday, but he never mixed up the fresh cheeses. Nobody came shopping. But he was very upset he could not go to pray. He got a heart attack and he died. He was 52. I was there with my mother and a brother. He was younger, about less than two years older. One day they picked up all the Jewish boys, and one boy returned. And I never knew how. I wrote in my book, and then I read the same thing in Elie Wiesel’s book, that this one boy returned and told us that they were taken to Poland. They had to dig their own graves. They were shot into them from their backs. We didn’t believe it. And we are sitting, and nobody is escaping. Nobody is thinking about it. I had my mother beside me. I was never thinking to escape. Nobody.

Harper: Did they take your brother Oscar?
KERN: Yes. He was lucky because one group of these Jewish boys were taken to Budapest, and they put them in forced labor, hard labor.

Harper: Like a labor brigade or something?
KERN: Yes.

Harper: Why don’t you continue telling us what happened.
KERN: That was in 1940, and for four years we took this depression, this constant reminding us that we have to be punished. We didn’t know why. Once, my uncle took me to Budapest, and my brother came to visit and he told us that they were all covered with lice. He used to send packages home for my mother, full with lice, she should wash it. It never could be washed. I met him in Budapest with some other Jewish boys. They were all broken, just barely surviving. Out of warm and Jewish homes, nice lives, and now they have to build railroads, streets, working with the rocks all day. Nobody was there to help, and that was the Hungarians. Then it got worse and worse, until one day they locked us into a ghetto.

Harper: In your town?
KERN: In my hometown, Sighet, they took all the Jewish people. They had to lock their doors behind them and come over to one end. Luckily, my home was in that part of town. We each opened our homes, and in every room a family moved in. They had to clear out the rooms. No beds, no tables. They had to sit and sleep on the floors. My mother and I moved over to my aunt’s quarters. My aunt got sick and she was in the hospital. She had two little children. So we lived with her two children in her quarters, and three other rooms were opened up for other families. And yet, they were my friends. I didn’t have to go downtown to meet them; we were all together in the ghetto and we don’t do nothing. We gathered every day, we talked, we laughed, we sang. No one realized what hit us. And it was 1944. We were saved until 1944.

Harper: Was there any shortage of food in your ghetto there?
KERN: I tell you truthful. I don’t remember because my mother took care of everything. How did those people survive coming over, and they didn’t let them bring anything with them? I remember one family who moved into our elegant salon. I went in once, two girls who used to be my schoolmates, and here on this beautiful, seven-foot grand piano, pots and pans and food all over. So they got to bring over some things. But later on I found out they had a Hungarian young man who used to visit those two girls, so exceptions were done once in a while.

Harper: And was your family, or your father, was his religion intact? Was there religious observance still? Did you light candles on Friday night?
KERN: No, he died.

Harper: Oh, that’s right. I’m sorry.
KERN: He died after he could not go to pray and was forced with all those harsh rules and regulations and beatings. He died. And then my grandmother died. And then everything disappeared. All the rituals disappeared. I wouldn’t continue.

Harper: How about other Jewish people? Did you notice other observance in other families?
KERN: Yes, they did it until the very last. They continued, I’m quite sure.

Harper: So by ’44, in your house there was your mother and you, and was that the only family that was living in your house?
KERN: No. In the bedroom a family. In the salon a family.

Harper: No, I meant your immediate family.
KERN: Yes, that’s all we were.

Harper: And then what happened?
KERN: Early morning they knocked on the gate, “Bake bread. Get out on the street.” And all the mothers mixed up the dough. Next door was a bakery. They baked a huge loaf of bread. I put on a pair of shoes, a dress, and a coat. I didn’t think about nothing else. My mother, she also wore a dress, a coat, and a pair of shoes, but she brought her handbag. She was always a lady. You cannot leave the house without a purse. And yet holding on to the two little children. We go out on the street, and we pull the shades, locked the doors. Everything was left behind.

I was 21 years old, and I remembered that I was always told that when you girls are 21 or 23, you’re supposed to get married and raise a family. That was my future. And now, standing outside, I was thinking to myself, “OK. My life is interrupted. I’m 21, and I did got a few offers already from young men for marriage, but I wasn’t ready.” So I promised myself that it doesn’t [matter] what’s going to follow as long as I could survive. I always used to love philosophy, and I started to think about it then. What a beautiful life I had, and it is interrupted, but I’m going to watch it and survive and come back to it. That’s all I knew how to figure it out, and was what I clinged to and I wished. And so we were taken to the railroad station and pushed into cattle cars.

Harper: How did you get to the railroad? Can you tell me how you were assembled?
KERN: Yes. Outside on the street, there were all those people, old people and young children and young women carrying babies, and we are starting to walk. You could see once in a while, people they did take some belongings along, little cases or boxes. They discarded them soon.
Harper: Did they tell you anything, where you were going? Did you have any idea?
KERN: No. Only a few soldiers came to get us, and not even Nazis. No Germans. There were Hungarians and some Serbs. Previously we’d met one, and he told us that he is very angry at the Hungarians, the way they persecute the Jewish people. And the same man came to take us to the railroad station. Well, we started to walk up the street instead of going to the railroad station, and they took us inside this synagogue which I had never seen before. We sat all night on the benches. During the nighttime a storm happened, rain and lightening. Suddenly, the lightening hit the Ten Commandments, and I was wondering, “What a beautiful sight that is! Is this a sign? Are we alive or are we dead?” I couldn’t figure it out. It was late at night. But in the morning we woke up and were chased to the railroad station.

Harper: Was this the entire ghetto at one time?
KERN: No.

Harper: Just segments of it?
KERN: Segments.

Harper: So how many people were in this group that marched to the synagogue?
KERN: Hundreds, thousands. I don’t know. I had no idea, but the synagogue was full and probably some had to even sleep outside. As soon as I came in I sat down with my mother and the two little cousins, and we never moved. Why would they do that, for the last trip?

Harper: You said you were chased to the railroad station?
KERN: Yes. In the morning they told us to get up and start walking, never had a chance to wash our faces or comb our hair. That was such a shame to be seen this way. We started to walk, and we passed all the homes I used to know [where] I used to have friends. Passed my store, my parent’s business. Shades were pulled. The whole city was dead, but they had freshly covered [the] streets. Black tar. Our streets were not very well kept up, with the carriages and the horses, and this morning it was freshly paved. So we passed the downtown, and I looked right and left in the streets where I used to go before, and the beautiful sweet shops [where] we used to meet, and the movies and the theater.

We passed walking, and then we arrived to the railroad station where I used to go so proudly as a teenager to take the train to visit my grandmother. Plush seats. That day there were cattle cars, boxcars without windows, and they jammed us into them full capacity. When it was my turn, they ordered us to get in and then I heard a voice saying, “Those are enough.” It was the Serb soldier we knew before; he came to watch us.

But still, we were sitting on the floor side by side, and we kept on rolling for three days and two nights, and the loaf of bread my mother baked was gobbled up by the two little cousins. I barely had a bite. I wasn’t hungry. It was a very, very depressing two nights. No food, no water, no stopping. Then the third day, cattle cars opened, and we are welcomed by some clean-shave-headed men with the striped uniforms. They told us, “You just arrived to Poland, Auschwitz concentration camp. This is a work camp.” [When] I heard. “It’s a work camp,” it put me at ease. I never had to work a day in my life, but I’m willing, just so I can survive.

Harper: Can I go back to the train ride for a few minutes? In the cars, how many people would you say were in your car?
KERN: At least a hundred.

Harper: What were the physical conditions in the car? And what was the mental condition of the people like?
KERN: We were by then down to nothing. Everybody was just sitting side-by-side, and helpless. It was dark, and if you needed to use, your needs, there was a pail. Then we discovered the little cubbyhole on one end. I don’t even know how they did it. Because in my part of the cattle car, all the youngsters, we decided we are going to congregate there. My mother was next to me, and the two little cousins, but I had those two girlfriends from my home, and a boy, friend, and his family, and some other very prominent families sitting across, a few feet away. On the other end of the cattle car were people from the other part of town. I knew them all, but we never spoke to each other. It was a different class.

Harper: Did anyone die in the car? On the way?
KERN: I thought I remembered hearing that one person did. But we could not pay any attention because it was the far end of the cattle car.

Harper: And were people talking or crying?
KERN: No, no. Whatsoever.

Harper: Just silent?
KERN: Silent and broken, just waiting what’s going to happen.

Harper: Did you have any idea of what was going to happen?
KERN: No. Most of the time we were sleeping.

Harper: So if you could start describing what happened when you arrived?
KERN: We were ordered to jump down from the cattle cars — the men and boys were selected in a column, women and children and young mothers carrying babies in another column — and start walking, five abreast. That was very important for the Nazis. But I decided it doesn’t matter, it is a work camp. I’m going to try my best just to stay alive. We are walking. Far ahead was a beeping light, and underneath stood an officer, very handsome. He kept motioning right and left, and I’ve seen my best girlfriend with her mother, arm and arm going to the left, and some other of my friends motioned to go to the right.

When I came to face him, he motions for me to go to my right, but my mother and the two little cousins next to me, they are motioned to go to the left. I took a step because I was motioned, but then I decided, “No, I’d better run after my mother because perhaps this nice gentleman doesn’t know that this is my mother. I’m supposed to go with her.” But the soldier with his bayonet came at me. He almost stabbed me, and that scared me. I started to run to my right. That was the last time I’ve seen people going to the left.

I joined my friends. We were taken into a cement building. Girls were there with scissors, razorblades. Took everything away from us, shoes, clothes, and they attacked our beautiful curls. They shaved our heads, and we were standing there naked and bald-headed. And I still had the spirit, wishful thinking, “I have to survive, that’s all I know. It doesn’t matter what they do to me.”

We were taken to another barrack. There were cubbyholes built into the wall. We had to sleep feet to feet, as many as possible. Then the blockova [a prisoner designated as block leader], the supervisor, came in. A Polish girl, kind of manly built. She started to walk up and down and cursing us, “You people, you don’t know what it means to suffer. We built this whole Auschwitz concentration camp while you were still sleeping in your feather beds!” She was so angry at us, and we didn’t know what happened. How much more pain and persecution can you get? Here we are baldheaded, and there was a hysteria broken out. My best girlfriend’s mother, two mothers survived out of 3,500 people. My girlfriend’s mother got a nervous breakdown. She started to cry, and she said, “Why are we together with all these men?” We were all baldheaded; we did look like boys.

But one of my friends from back home stopped the blockova and asked her, “Did you have a brother David?” She stopped, very angry, but she said, “Yes.” She said, “I have to tell you that your brother came to my mother. He was on his way to Russia.” Everybody in those days, they thought the communists will help everybody, so he was going to join the communists. But before he run away from Poland, he was tired and hungry, and for some reason he wound up in her mother’s home. Her mother helped him and cleaned him and fed him, and off he went. And this blockova, the supervisor, walked out, and after that, no matter who came to get workers, we were in quarantine. She saved us because of this little incident.

Harper: Can we stop here? We need to change tapes.
KERN: Yes.

[Pause]

Harper: I’d like for you to describe more in detail about your initial arrival, the whole process. You mentioned already that your head was shaved. I’d like to know things about — Did you take a shower? Were you given a tattoo? Things like this.
KERN: Not yet. That all came later. When we were taken out from the cattle cars, there were so many young women carrying babies, and the first thing those clean-shaved-headed men with the striped uniforms, they came and told the young women, “Let your mother carry the babies.” Of course, most of the young women wouldn’t give up their babies, and that was the reason they were selected to go to the left. Then in front of me was this beautiful woman, and she kept on crying. She never stopped since we arrived. We kept on telling her, “Why are you crying?” Well, she knows we are going to be killed. Then incidentally a German soldier walked by, and he told her, “Madam, you don’t think we are murderers?” He overheard her saying. And that’s how they fooled us.

So it was a horrifying experience to arrive, to be selected, and the nice officer who selected us, his name was Doctor Mengele. I faced him again later on because of my poor skeleton body. We were constantly selected, and whoever became skinny, they were just killed. I was a very small person, and it didn’t take too long to become very skinny. But after we arrived, the supervisor told us right away, “Can you see the barbed wire fence around you? Don’t ever touch it. Can you see that building with the tall chimney smoking constantly? Don’t touch it. Don’t ever admit that you are sick; otherwise you will wind up in the smoke.”

Harper: So that’s when you found out that there was a gas chamber and crematorium?
KERN: We didn’t know what it meant, crematorium. We had no idea. I never read books about killing people. I had never seen a gun in my life. But she warned us. In Auschwitz concentration camp they had a bathhouse, and they used to take us once in a while. Standing under a few showerheads, we were too many, so we really couldn’t take a shower. But one day we were taken to take a shower, and a girl looked up and saw some black showerheads, and she started to cry. She points to it, and we all looked up, and she says she heard that everybody who was selected to go to the left, that’s how they were killed. Instead of water, gas came out. Everybody started to cry, and we pulled against the wall.

The door opened and a very angry soldier comes in, and the girl tells him, “We don’t want to take a shower today because we know what’s going to happen.” And he left. After a while, our clothes were thrown back, we got dressed, and we were allowed to walk back to our cabins. That was the first time we have seen how the Nazis were committing their killings. They wanted everybody to walk peacefully into the crematoriums. They did not want the people to know that they are going to be killed.

Harper: Was that a real shower room?
KERN: It was the same shower room, looked to me. I never checked before. But as the rumors went on, they told us that when the gas is turned on, somehow the floors turned upside down and discarded the bodies, and then the inmates had to clear away the dead bodies. I had never seen it, but we heard so many incidents. We also heard — I was working night shift, and they were taking all the Gypsies into the crematoriums, but they knew something and they were not willing to walk in peaceful in that building. So they started to scatter all around the grounds, and some really were lucky to hide. They escaped, and they are also here to tell. But all the other Gypsies, they were all rounded up and still killed that night. So we heard crematorium, we heard gas chambers, we knew death is all around us, but we couldn’t live like that. We didn’t want to know it.

Harper: Now this story that you were just telling, was this in the immediate days of your arrival, or had this happened later?
KERN: It went on. That was the immediate arrival. It was May until December that I was in Auschwitz concentration camp.

Harper: I want to go back to try to get chronological. So after your head was shaved, you were organized into barracks. Who made up your barracks? Were they Hungarians? Or what nationality and what religion?
KERN: You mean who built it?

Harper: No. Who were the prisoners that you were housed with?
KERN: The prisoners were all my hometown people. We were selected out of 3,500 people from my hometown. This was the first transport. 250 stayed alive in two months. That was the barrack.

Harper: Were you then immediately selected to begin a work job?
KERN: We were lucky. We did not go to work because of our supervisor Giska, who saved us because of this incident with her brother. She saved us almost until July or August; we never had to go to work. The ground outside was hot clay, dry clay, and every day there was an air raid. We had to stay indoors and listen to the airplanes zooming by. And how we prayed to be bombed! We never did. We received a hot drink in the morning. They called it a soup at noon, but it was just hot water. Something was floating on the top. You could feel the gravel. And another hot drink in the evening, and one ration bread for the whole day.

Harper: So what did you do during the day? What was a typical day like?
KERN: We were sitting. Early in the morning, she sent us outside while she and her crew cleaned up the clay floors, and when we were allowed to come in, it smelled from disinfectant. It was so beautiful, so clean. We didn’t do nothing else, just sat around. I wish sometimes we should have done something else, but she saved us. Came later, much later, that she lost her ability. Somebody discovered her doing, and she was killed. Because of us.

Harper: Were you given a tattoo?
KERN: One day coming home from work, that was later in the summertime, they were asking, “Are there any artists among you?” Girls raised their arms, “Yes, I’m an artist.” We were taken into a building. There were girls, they were given needles, and each us got a number. That was our tattoo. We were standing there now, and I was thinking to myself, “Was not enough bare skin? Just one dress, bare head, and now we lost our names.” They never called us by our name any longer. We became a number. I was lucky because I was very afraid, and the girl told me, “Don’t be afraid. It won’t hurt you.” But I don’t remember if it was painful or not, I was so scared. Some girls, though, were not artists, and they were scribbled all over huge numbers, wherever they found a place, and they were looking awful. I heard many had to remove it after the war. I never thought about it; it never bothered me.

Harper: Can you read your number?
KERN: It’s a letter “A,” for Auschwitz, 7-9-0-3.

Harper: Would they call you that in German? In German, they would yell your number?
KERN: “Neunundsiebzig und drei,” three times a day. We had to stand five abreast — the stars were still out — and wait until the Nazi woman came around. By then the sun was way up high, and the girls were fainting and tired, and beaten to stand up again. But finally this beautiful Nazi woman came around and counted us five by five. One day we were selected, and the first thing, the Nazis ordered us to get undressed completely. Two soldiers. You had to walk between them, and they looked over if your bodies are still okay or too skinny, selected them. We had never seen any of my friends disappear. One evening a woman was so desperate she ran outside into the fence, and I’ve seen her being scorched in one split second. She just collapsed in front of the fence. Then I remember what our supervisor used to tell, “Don’t ever touch the fence.” We didn’t know it was an electrical barbed-wire fence, but when I’ve seen it, then I believed it.

Harper: So once your supervisor was taken away, you had to start working?
KERN: It was late summer. We went through many different jobs after that. Just carrying rocks, both side of us, carrying from one end to another end. Bleeding fingers all day, no food no water, just to break our resistance [coughs]. We survived that day. One day I was working along this barbed-wire fence. And on the other side of the fence were some striped-uniform men. They were digging something and threw the dirt over the fence, and we had to level it. The sun was hot, beating down [coughs]. The men made us sure to know that the electricity in the fences are turned off, so we shouldn’t be afraid to touch the fence. Most of the girls, by evening they wound up with first-degree sunburn. I had a small piece of kerchief; I found it someplace. And I remember that my mother always told me, “When you take a sunbath, always make it wet, then tie it on your head. Don’t ever expose your head for the sun for too long.” So I had this little kerchief, and I kept on exchanging. I put it on my head. I tied one leg. I tied another leg. And I never had a sunburn.

One man across the fence started to talk to me in Polish, and another man standing next to him, he translated into Yiddish. They told me that he wants to give me some potato pancakes, and if I like powdered sugar on top. I couldn’t believe my ears. It used to be my favorite. Now across this fence — they told us behind them is this building of no-return, the crematorium. He offers me something to eat, and I said, “Sure. Thank you.” He disappeared, and he returned with a plate with hot pancakes, powdered sugar. But then I seen my friend’s eyes and some man looking at me. I couldn’t eat. I had, I think, four or five little pancakes. I tore it in pieces, and I gave everybody just a little piece across the fence. One man said, “Merci.” He was French. There were people from all over the world, and hungry, and I shared it with my friends.

In the evening when we returned to our barracks, I climbed up on the top of our sleeping —was stilts, with platforms, and I always wanted privacy. I climbed up on the very top, and I heard that there is a man looking for a specific little girl in the evening. I pulled my blanket over my head. I did not dare to breathe. The following day I heard that this man told the story that he would like to meet that girl that he fed, but there was another girl who was willing to talk to him, so I was free and saved.

Then one day I was sitting in Auschwitz. It was curfew. A girl came to me, we were on the ground, and she placed a small piece of paper in my palm. It said, “Come to the bathhouse. Auntie Sarah.” I couldn’t believe it. Here we were hundreds and thousands of people, and she finds me, at curfew. Auntie Sarah was the mother of the two little cousins who had to go with my mother to the left. She was dragged out of the hospital, still bleeding, but they brought her into the camp. But she was smart. Anyway, the first thing for her was to search for me.

I followed this girl. Nobody was on the roads. Hot sun. I felt I was burning up with the bald head. Going against a building, I peeked through a window. I see a huge line with naked women, and suddenly an arm waved to me and there was my Auntie Sarah, my second mother at home. It took a few weeks, couple of months until we could meet. She told me right away that she knows what’s going on and she knows that we are not going to ever see my mother nor her children. She knew it. Then she volunteered to work in the kitchen. Because of that, she brought me home daily potato peel. I was feeding myself on potato peel, and suddenly I was bloated, and my skin, you couldn’t see my ribs any longer. Before that you could see my ribs already, and now everybody told me that you never looked better before, because of the starch. She really saved my life.

Harper: You mentioned when this man who gave you the potato pancakes, there was a French man there — I’m interested to know if you had contact with other sorts of prisoners, people who were wearing a different sort of badge, and from different countries?
KERN: No, we were always just together with women, and most of the time, I tried like everybody else to stay together with your own friends, maybe relatives if you were fortunate.

Harper: Were those friends your support network in a sense?
KERN: No. I was very surprised. From the very first day, everybody became like an animal. Everybody was for their own selves. I was watching mother fighting with daughter, and sisters fighting with sisters, and I couldn’t believe it. I was alone, yet I became the peacemaker. Among all those well-groomed, tall girls. I was a little girl there, and I couldn’t see how we all became like that. I said it must be something that makes us act like animals. Of course, after the war we found out we were tranquilized, we were drugged. And we were not normal. The girls never had their periods, and we really did not act like humans. This drug, in fact, turned some girls into thieves. They had too much energy. If you went to sleep and you didn’t want to finish your daily little piece of bread, you put it under your head and slept on it, so maybe tomorrow you will have a chance to finish it. By morning it was gone. People were stealing. You had to be very, very careful after that. They turned us into inhumans, really.

Harper: Do you know what sort of drug they were giving you?
KERN: I read once a book and they mentioned [sounds like “braun”]. I never read too many books because I was afraid to read, but when I had my manuscript, because I had no one to talk to, I had to write down everything. After that I dared to open a book or two. There’s where I remember seeing that [braun?] mentioned.

Harper: This may sound like a strange question, but what did you talk about with people?
KERN: We never talked, never talked. In the beginning, the first day we arrived, I organized a group and we were singing. My friends and I, we always used to sing back home. The blockova was so excited, she even gave us each a slice of bread, she was so happy to see us singing. But after two or three days, the drug hit us, we became withdrawn, sad, we couldn’t talk. Then came the time little by little that we were put to work. Giska, our supervisor, disappeared. We were taken to other barracks. My job was to take all the most beautiful clothes — dresses, coats — we had to cut it up in strips and braid it, and they took those braiding to the soldiers for explosives. For weeks and weeks that’s all I had to do. Then one day the Nazis came to take blood from us, and some girls volunteered because in exchange they got a slice of liverwurst. I was under the table. I was so afraid; I wouldn’t give my blood.

Harper: At this time, when you started working, was it a factory or just . . .?
KERN: No, it was just a barrack. They had huge, long wooden tables and benches, and many, many dull scissors. And we sat there from sunrise til sunset.

Harper: What month did this start in?
KERN: It must have been late summer. We did not know what month, what year. I didn’t know there was a war going on. I knew we are here to be killed, and I knew I wanted to survive. That’s all I knew. I had to work very hard because I became so skinny. How I invented to save my life, today it makes me laugh, but when you are in a position that you know that you’re no good any longer, you have to die, that’s all [there] is to it. We were selecting. I see in front of me two beautiful sisters from my hometown, and we are going through a selection. The two Nazis are standing, and I got very afraid. I was very skinny at that point, so I asked the two sisters to take me in the middle. Why would I do that? Later on, I figured out when the Nazis will see a beautiful body coming by — I really sneaked after the first one, very, very fast, and then came the other sister very fast after me. So they just did not discover me. Ingenuities. You have to figure out, daily.

I was cutting and braiding, and one day some green paper fell out of jacket and I found a hole. I don’t know how many dollar bills. The girls told me, “Take it to the supervisor, and she will tell you what to do with it. That’s a treasure!” So we went home, back to the barrack, and she said she will take all the dollar bills. Sometimes the inmates, the young men, they would bribe a Nazi with a dollar bill and they might escape. Sometimes they did. Most of the time they were captured and brought back and hanged. But she took all my dollar bills. In return, she gave us bread and honey and sugar, and with my friends we had a feast. Then when they took us to the shower and we had to release all our clothes and everything, I folded the dollar bills and I had a mouthful with dollar bills underneath the shower. And I survived with a ten-dollar bill.

Harper: Who was your supervisor at this point that you gave the money to?
KERN: It was a different Polish girl, in a different barrack. She was very nice.

Harper: And while you were cutting the clothes, there were daily selections? Or how did the selection process work?
KERN: The clothes were taken away from the people who arrived by the cattle cars, and that was already the end of 1944. By then, they did not select anymore who should die, who should live. Everybody went into the crematoriums, and their clothes were confiscated and brought to us to braid them.

Harper: I’m trying to understand how many selections you went through? Was it a weekly thing? Monthly thing?
KERN: Surprising. We never knew; we were always surprised. Mostly when we returned to our barracks after a hard day labor, we were surprised. We never knew when.

Harper: And who did the selection?
KERN: The Nazi soldiers.

Harper: Just random soldiers, or . . .?
KERN: I never looked at them. I never seen them usually anywhere because they put our people in charge. The Nazis were not around. They were having feasts in their barracks with their Nazi women; they never came out. Only by the surprise selections.

Harper: The people that were selected, were they taken to the crematorium?
KERN: Straight into the gas chambers.

Harper: Did you notice any preferential treatment given to anybody?
KERN: The only thing was different that [was] the people who came prior to us. They built the camps, and the Nazis still had plenty of food, so they were in good shape. When we came in 1944, the Nazis were losing already, so there was no more food. And that was the worst year of the war, in 1944. Until winter came. They ordered us to get out on the roads and start walking. Some girls had no more shoes. We didn’t have coats. We are forced to start walking.

Harper: Do you know what month this was?
KERN: December. Usually, we did not know anything — no dates, no days, no happenings — but it was December. They were driving us deeper into Germany, and we had no idea. Very, very few, they were very sick. They couldn’t walk along. They were hiding. But the Nazis were not proper anymore because they knew that the Russian army is coming. That was the reason they chased us deeper into Germany.

Harper: Did you know [inaudible]?
KERN: No, we didn’t know anything. We arrived after three days and two nights without food, without water. They stopped us overnight in farms, just to sleep for a few hours, and then driving us further and faster. That was what they called later “the death march.” Everybody was there, but so few survived. We started out a long, long line. People collapsed. People were shot. I almost lost my life. I had a blister on my heel, and I couldn’t walk fast enough, found myself at the end of the line. I heard a gunshot, and it scared me. He could have shot me. But I started to invent again, “How can I save my life?” I started to walk real, real fast, and then I stopped to catch my breath. I did that all the way, and I saved my life. If someone wanted to live, it was a hard chore, but you could survive. Yet many gave up. Many of my friends said they don’t want to live. They know their parents were killed, and they just don’t want to live. And they died. But if you wanted to stick to life, you had to work for it very, very hard. That’s all I knew.

Then after this third day, we came into Germany, and somebody told somebody that no sooner we left Auschwitz concentration camp, the Russians surprised the Nazis. They liberated the camps. They found all those demolished crematoriums and gas chambers and ashes all over the ground, and dead bodies. There were a few survivors. They were lucky. They were sent back to their countries. Yet what we did not know was that the American army joined with the British and many soldiers who ran away from the Nazi regime because they just did not like it over the end. This is already almost 1945. They all joined, and they were walking right behind us.

When we arrived in Germany after those three days, all I had was a little bit of snow. For three days. We are being taken to a railroad station, open cattle cars, and we sat and we sat, and the cattle cars never moved. The girls were crying; they were hungry and thirsty. And we did not know the reason. So we were sitting there thinking, “Food?” No food. There was no water. The girls were dying from thirst. And then they started to drink their own urine. Everybody was hysterical and crying, and my aunt asked, “Is anyone of us who could pray?” And this whole mess. One woman said, “I’m the wife of a rabbi. I will start you into the Shema.” So we started to pray, crying stopped, and we fell asleep. Next morning I woke up and I shook my head. The snow fell off. I looked at myself. We were all covered with snow; it was an open cattle car. I took my little spoon, that’s all I had, and I ate every little bit of snow off myself. I woke up my aunt, “Please! Have your breakfast!” And it saved our lives.

Then later on the cattle cars rolled on, and we arrived to Bergen-Belsen. The first day when we arrived, they took us to take a shower. There was a building. Among others, I hear a woman ordering around, “Schneller [faster]! Schneller! Stay here! Go there!” And I thought to myself, “This voice sounds so familiar.” I came closer to this person, and I said, “Rose?” She was my best girlfriend back home. Now she became a leader. So of course, right away she selected me with my aunt and some other of our friends, and she took us into her building. It was a clean building with windows. I had never seen a building with windows for a whole year.

Harper: If I can interrupt — she was like a kapo. Was she Jewish, or was she . . .?
KERN: She was my girlfriend, sure, a Jewish girl. But she didn’t call herself anything. She was just like a supervisor over the barrack. She had connections with the Nazis who lived in the lookout towers. She was very beautiful, and she knew how to get and go through black markets. She used to do that back home already. She was a very smart girl. But anyway, she took us under her wing, and every day we were still counted, but not as strictly or as early as in Auschwitz. Then suddenly, sitting on the floor, they never took us anymore to wash. We got invaded by lice, and typhus broke out. Then as I read [in] Anne Frank’s diary, then [was] when she dies, during this time.

It is already 1945, April. I was less than 50 pounds, bones covered with skin. I had no more gum. My eyes were deep in the socket. I don’t remember thinking about life any longer. But suddenly, the daily water and the daily bread is not coming. We had no idea what’s going on. They throwed us a turnip a day, and then we had to divide the turnip, and I couldn’t chew anyway. So we were just laying around like breathing skeletons. Everybody who was asking for water, there was no. Next morning their bodies were dragged out of the barrack, and at this point there was no one to dig anymore graves. They were piled up outside, and the pile grew taller. I told my aunt, “I don’t want to go outside anymore.” We were just laying there, going out, out, little by little.

One day I was asking for water, very thirsty, and I see my aunt crawling out of the room. After a while she returns with a small container with water, and I drank it and I fell asleep. As I love philosophy, I took time to think about it that. Probably this is the way people die. You don’t see, you don’t hear, nothing hurts. It was a very peaceful, beautiful sleep, but I don’t know for how long. I’m awake, and I hear noises and running and shooting outside. The door opens, and a very handsome green beret head peeks in, but he shuts the door again. And I was thinking to myself, “Who dares to wake me up?!” I was in such a peace. I gave up.

And yet, the Nazis were caught by surprise. All those beautiful liberators who were right behind us, they were following us. They discovered Bergen-Belsen gate. They wanted to open it; they couldn’t. They took their trucks, they broke down the gate, and the sight they found that they will never forget. Hundreds and thousands of dead bodies all around the ground. They captured the Nazis, and the first thing they made them clear away and dig some mass graves. Then no sooner the door opens again, and I feel somebody picks up my head and pours something hot, and I had to swallow. What an effort that was. For a whole week we didn’t have water. As far as I know, I was told that the Nazis knew that the Allies are close. They poisoned the food in the kitchen, they turned off the water, they poisoned everything, and in the last minute they were going to give it to us when they will be captured. They knew they lost already.

But the Allies surprised them, and some of us survived, and some of us will tell. Many, many died after that. We wound up tuberculosis, losing hearing and teeth and all sorts of complications. I just decided to speak out because I heard one day that real Nazis are telling that the Holocaust never happened. For more than 30 years I was silent. I never talked about it; I never told my children about it. Then one day I heard on the radio talk show that if you have no one to talk to and you have something to write, why don’t you take a pencil and paper and write it down. When I started to write my manuscript, not to ever be seen or read, it was just my past, my pain. When I was done I folded it, I put it away. I never read it.

Harper: If I could ask you to go back to liberation. What happened immediately after liberation?
KERN: My aunt encouraged me to go outside. We were kind of like almost sun worshippers. She said, “You have to go outside and have a suntan.” Well, two sticks, my legs, and I wobble outside, put my body under a brush and let at least my leg get the suntan. Then suddenly I see a truck coming by and stop, and they took some movie pictures. I was so embarrassed, I pulled all the way into the bushes. But she made me start to walk. Yet she got worse; her legs swelled up. And there were no doctors. There was no one to help us.

Then one day, a Swedish Red Cross group came in, beautiful Swedish girls. They asked us if we would like to be taken to Sweden, and I told my aunt I don’t go to Sweden. I wanted to go home, of course. But she made me promise that I will never, I should never return. I was very upset, but I had to listen to her; she was always my second best advisor. And I registered to be taken to Sweden, and then she dies. Found myself on a stretcher, arrived to Sweden. They put us into some tubs with hot solutions, and when we came out there was not a single lice alive, and we were clean. The Swedish people sent us beautiful, clean clothes, and they fed us. And I found myself in a bed.

Harper: This was a hospital?
KERN: It was a school transformed to a hospital. Just taken out the school benches and put in beds.

Harper: I’m sorry to interrupt, but you were then immediately taken to Sweden in your frail condition?
KERN: If I would have returned to my hometown, I wouldn’t be here today, because all the Jewish doctors were killed, and all the army who went through my hometown took everything along with them.

Harper: It sounds like you couldn’t really walk or anything. How would you have . . .?
KERN: I don’t know, but people did return one way or the other. Some were well enough to hitchhike or get a train someplace so far, and then they made it. Well, how else would I figure out not to return to my hometown? I was taken from there. Of course I wanted to go back.

Harper: Did you have any contact with the soldiers?
KERN: Where?

Harper: In Bergen-Belsen after liberation? Did the soldiers give you any rations, or did you talk to them?
KERN: Some who could walk around, yes, they were friendly. In fact, my cousin met a very nice American boy, and they got married. But I was always in the dumps. I was just a breathing skeleton, and it took many months, many months until I could move my fingers or to get out from the bed. For us, really, the breathing skeletons, there was a new life to learn again. Then to clear our minds from the tranquilizer.

And yet, lying in Sweden in bed, an address came to my mind, my brother’s address from Spain. I never had to address an envelope or anything, but I must have seen it someplace. I called quickly the nurse. I couldn’t hold on to a pencil, so I dictated her some words, “I’m looking for Doctor so-and-so.” I remembered, “L’hôpital d’ophtalmologie, Madrid, Spain” [she gives it the French pronunciation]. That’s all I remembered. I never talked about it, I never wrote it, but I must have seen it. Then she wrote, and I got an answer, and I found my doctor brother.

It took many years until I was reunited with my other brother. He survived the Hungarians, work camps, almost died, but he and his friends walked from Budapest until my hometown. Weeks and weeks. All the railroads were demolished; they had to walk. He comes home, somebody else lives in our house. Then somebody got angry at him. The communists were controlling now, and they told the communists that he did something. He was arrested. They told him, “You had a rich father,” and they put him to jail. Then of course, all those Jewish boys who did return, and some girls, they decided not to stay there and tried to escape. Many were killed. The guards who were guiding them, they were killed. I think he had to try three times until he succeeded, and then he wound up in Israel.

Harper: Tell me how you left Sweden, where you went.
KERN: In Sweden, we were just hosted, and they gave us all the time to recover. There was no medicine to give to us; I wound up with some water spots on my lungs. They didn’t know what to do with us. The girls who could walk, they raided the kitchen during the nighttime, and they ate up everything they could, and they died. So many died. I was bedridden. I was just taking it easy for a good many weeks. Then we were taken to another convalescent place in Sweden. I could walk by then. And all this good food, boiled potatoes and fish. I was a very poor eater. I didn’t like it, but I had to stay alive. I forced myself.

I came into this building, and it was already late in the afternoon, semi-lit, and two girls see me coming in, “Alice! Alice!” I looked at them. They recognized me. They were two sisters working for my aunt. Wherever I went, I always was recognized. In Auschwitz concentration camp, we came to a barrack one night, to a new barrack, I had to walk over some legs to find a place to settle down, and a girl started to shout my name, “I remember you! You came to Czechoslovakia with your Angora coat!” And here I was with this grey saggy dress and bald head, and she recognized me. Another girl recognized me because she was a poor girl and my mother took care of her, and so she gave me extra rations. It was quite something, to be there again and to be alive. Then in this convalescent place was one man allowed to come in to take pictures, and out of a hundred girls, I married him. Turned out to be he had a brother in Portland, Oregon, and we decided to come to Portland, Oregon.

Harper: Where was he from, this man?
KERN: He was born near Vienna, an Austrian. Four generations of Jewish people in a small village. Nobody knew anything wrong about Jewish people. He had a very good friend, played violin together, and one day he showed up with black boots, swastika. He says, “Hugo, I joined the Nazis, the SS.” Then later on he picked him up to take him to the railroad station. He even gave him a hug. He told him, “Hugo, if every Jewish person would be as nice as you are, we wouldn’t have any problems.” So he was taken to Dachau. But that was 1939, and in those days, if you could show that another country let you come in, they would let you leave Germany. And his brother had a wife, and she was working on that. He went to Sweden. He survived because the HeHalutz [Jewish youth movement] was working in Vienna, and they worked with all the countries to let Jewish boys come in. He was sent there to learn farming so after that he could go to Israel.

Harper: So what year did you come to Portland?
KERN: 1947.

Harper: And did you work? Did he work? What sort of job . . .?
KERN: We never had a profession. But I adapted myself quite easily. I found out this is America, this is a free country, you have to do something. Just think. My husband, I don’t know what they did to him in Dachau, but he was very, very frightened, and he wouldn’t do anything hardly, but one day he got a job at the Doernbecher Furniture factory. He stayed there for years and years, and I started to sew for White Stag.

Looking at movies back home in my little hometown, they always showed a family, Andy Hardy Family, and they had a little white picket fence in front of their homes. I said, “Now I’m in America, I am going to buy a new house with a white picket fence around it.” I thought that was so beautiful. We came from Sweden with 25 dollars in our pocket, and I’m thinking already to buy a house. Of course, you can imagine people’s opinion, but I never gave up. I started to sew, and my husband was working. Within a year, I saved up a few hundred dollars. We found out there is a development in North Portland; three new homes were being built. We took the bus, and we put the down payment — 250 dollars down and 46 dollars a month. We bought the new little house. I got pregnant the first time. Evie Oxman was my first baby. She was born in that house. Then three more came, and I never spoke about the Holocaust.

But I heard the groups who deny it — we made it up. I rolled up my sleeves, and I remembered the number. I decided that this is not fair. Who am I to stand up and talk? I was just a mother raising babies. But no one else would do it. And I started to talk. By now it’s over 16 years. I always say, “I wish I wouldn’t have to do it. Life is so beautiful, to be alive, to have a family.” But I have to do it because there are so few survivors who are able to, and there are so many untold stories that people will never hear. But I am at ease right now because four little girls, all four of them found out eventually why we were so different, as they were growing up. I didn’t want them to feel this way; I want them to feel just like everybody else. But they saw the difference. And yet, when they understood, they’re all involved in helping to keep the memory alive. And I know they will continue.

Harper: Did you receive help or support from any Jewish organizations in Portland?
KERN: The strangest thing happened. When we came from Sweden, my uncle in New York, he was so excited. He had to send six security affidavits that we will not become a burden to this country. He would not let them deposit us in New York. He came to get us in Boston. Then the authorities found out that my husband had a brother and the brother had a small grocery store. They just cut us off from every little help. We never got any help. His brother was in trouble. He had a partner; he lost his business. And we just had to stick it out.

Harper: When you first came here, were you involved in the Jewish community?
KERN: Yes, we returned to the synagogue right away.

Harper: And you raised your children with . . .?
KERN: Sunday school. From North Portland to Southwest every Sunday we went. I felt hurt as a religious person, but I refused to pay too much attention and question it. I don’t want to question; I just want to keep on going. This is how I was brought up. You go to the synagogue, you pray, and you go home. But when my three daughters were married and I was suffering with sinus problems, just like today, I decided maybe if I would go to California, the dry air and sun would help me. We decided to sell out, and we moved to Palm Springs.

When we arrived there with one teenage daughter, of course, right away we go to the synagogue and enrolled her to Sunday school. They were asking me, “Who are you? Where you coming from? Could you help us?” I said, “I would like to help you, but all I know is music. I love music!” And they asked me to be their program chairman. Then came Hadassah, and I should help them with programming. And then came B’nai B’rith Women, and I should help them with programming. I became program chairman within one year for all those four organizations, and I enjoyed it.

I knew a lot about Judaism, and I knew lots of Jewish and Israeli music, and in Palm Springs, there were many, many Jewish people there who didn’t pay any attention. They did not follow rituals, traditions. They went to the synagogue, yes. So I exposed them to Israeli music and dancing. Came Purim around, they were singing shamrock, the Irish songs, and not to hurt their feelings, I combined the program with Irish songs and somebody wrote Jewish words to it. And then, on the other hand, my little daughter was a very good piano player, so she was always coming along with me, and we entertained them with the Israeli songs. So little by little. Then I also organized the choir, a volunteer choir. I used to imagine myself conducting a choir, and that was my best chance. I knew all the Israeli songs, which the words were taken out from the Bible. All the prayers were set to music. I got hold of records, and I taught those people. We even took over once a Friday evening service. And I was very proud.

Then eventually, I became the Holocaust Survivors of the Desert president. It was very, very hard because they were not letting themselves [be] allowed to say, “I’m a survivor.” They were keeping quiet, just the way I was for all those years. But eventually we were well organized. Then the community woke up and asked me, “What would you like us to remember you by?” I said, “The only thing I could think about would be an eternal light in the synagogue to commemorate the Holocaust and all those who died.” And they ordered a very beautiful lamp from Israel. They did hang it up inside the sanctuary. Everybody knew now, the Holocaust is here.

They were asking me another time, “What else would you like to happen?” Palm Springs is a resort place; people are coming there from all over the world. One time during the High Holidays I came in late and somebody recognized me from my back, and I thought that was such a miracle because now I was older and I had a different look. But she did recognize me. So I thought maybe it would be nice if we would have a book from the survivors. We will leave it behind as a legacy, and everybody who comes to Palm Springs will be able to open this book and search. I was constantly searching for friends and relatives after the war. And I was granted. A couple of very nice people, they built an acrylic stand, and on the top of it, calligraphy, written beautiful. Every single survivor, where they were born, where they were liberated. You can go and check it. In all three synagogues. They each received a stand like that, and also the eternal light. And I wish someday it will happen in Portland, Oregon, too.

Harper: I know you said it a number of times, but I’d like to again get your thoughts about — I know this is a difficult question to answer, but what was it that kept you alive?
KERN: When I was 21 years old, I was supposed to get married, and I started to feel sorry for myself in Auschwitz. I said, “How can a girl die without having a real affair with a man, and a real experience having children?” I refused. That was my wish. And of course, I had another wish. I knew my older brother was alive. I knew that. And I wished really to meet with him again, just to cling to something. I never read about books like that, and when I was in trouble this is what I discovered I had to do. That’s what made me survive — wishing, holding onto life. We never prayed because we never knew what day it was or what year it was. Except once in Auschwitz when we were selected. A woman started to cry, saying that, “Tonight is Kol Nidre night!” How did she remember? We didn’t know what month it was. But she remembered. And we were selected in that beautiful room to be as an [offer?]. We were going to be killed the following day. Incidentally, we found out, and because we found out everybody was crying. The Nazis couldn’t take us peacefully in the crematoriums, so they did not do it. Unexplainable. Miracles. I call it miracles.

Harper: Do you have any messages for people who may be watching this tape in years to come?
KERN: As time goes on and I’m sent all over, wherever they want to listen to survivors, I’m there. There are many, many small communities where they never met a Jewish person, and then I come. They see me, and I don’t hate. When I got married, my husband said right away, “The only thing you have to promise me, you will never hate because there were good Germans and there were good everybody. There were some who committed crimes, but don’t hate because that’s a sickness and it will make you sick.” This advice was the best in my life, but not too many got this type of advice.

As the world is turning and times are changing, to know we have a country, to achieve a country in my life, Israel, and to see that, it is a security for me. I was there once. I took a nice fundraising amount to Yad Vashem, and they honored us. I see changes, and I see only for the better because also this Anne Frank exhibit, which is going now all over the country, brings out Jews and gentiles together. It is a beautiful side; it must turn better. Then I speak to children, and they buy my book. They carry it around like a little Bible. They love it because I was lucky to have a few pictures to be able to put in. And they understand the innocence of a person. The children are the most wonderful audience. Now I see some elderly people coming out, at clubs, and they sit and they listen. That’s all I ask — read, get educated, listen, and try to make a better world. That’s the bottom line.

Harper: Thank you very much.
KERN: You’re welcome.

Harper: [To others in the room] Do you have any questions?
Other voice: Not right now.

Harper: Why don’t you just talk about the book?
KERN: I had many, many pages to write down my pain. No one was around to publish it. I was always told, “We have too many books about the Holocaust.” And while I stayed in Palm Springs, I opened the yellow pages. I picked out a name. It turned out to be a priest, and he told me that he would be willing to read my manuscript. And he did it, and he published it. In 1988, I was very lucky because my aunt used to correspond with my mother before the war, and my mother used to send pictures to her. She mailed me all the pictures, like my family pictures, where hardly anyone ever recovered pictures. And a few others, like my mother and her mother, my famous granny. And in my granny’s garden, she used to have beautiful, tall corn growing, vegetables. How I can appreciate those pictures today. That’s all I had left.

Reich: If I can ask you, where was this aunt living that got the pictures?
KERN: She was in New York, very nice lady. In fact, she was not even Jewish. My uncle married her. She was a nurse when he was sick in the hospital. They got married. Wonderful, beautiful lady. And she mailed my aunt different pictures from my growing up.

Reich: What about the pictures of concentration camps?
KERN: It’s coming. This picture I value so much because when we arrived to Auschwitz, they took everybody’s shoes away. My little cousin took a picture, and you can see just the tiny little bit of those shoes. Those were the shoes that I arrived to Auschwitz, and it did not fit anyone and I got them back. The only person who got the shoes back. Then one day I was featured in the newspaper, and a veteran called me and he says, “Mrs. Kern, I liberated Auschwitz! I have to show you some pictures I took.” And those were the pictures he came and brought to me.

Reich: Who was this person?
KERN: A liberator.

Reich: A Russian?
KERN: No, in Palm Springs. A Mexican boy. He says he was just graduating from high school. It was fashionable to join the Army, and the first thing he found himself on the front, killing, and he couldn’t shoot, so always his friends from his behind have to shoot the enemy. But he took pictures as they opened gates and all the dead bodies they discovered and found. It’s a little bit dark. There was one picture in Sweden when some young boys came and wanted to take pictures of us, but I was so embarrassed because my legs were really like two sticks, and I would never show myself without pajama pants. My hair was just about growing out. And that was the young man that took the pictures. And eventually when I got married, this was the picture from my husband. That’s all I recovered. Pictures. At least something. But I do hope I will be able to return someday.